Gun Control, RIP

2012 was a horrific year for mass shootings. Americans were shocked by an April spree at a religious school in Oakland that killed seven; the brutal theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, in July that killed 12; the Sikh Temple massacre in Wisconsin in August that claimed six lives; and the September Minneapolis sign-plant slaughter of five; among others. It became almost hard to call these episodes shocking as summer turned to fall—just another expected part of the news landscape, like political scandals or Middle East bombings.

Seems like that should make now a propitious time to issue a book subtitled A Liberal’s Case for the Second Amendment. Author Craig R. Whitney, a former reporter and editor for the New York Times, has written a volume that tells the cultural and legal history of Americans’ attitudes toward guns, as well as of their right to own and use them.

The book also pushes a set of policy prescriptions that Whitney paints as the rational, intelligent middle between untenable pro-gun attitudes (no new laws restricting our ability to buy, carry, and store weapons) and untenable anti-gun attitudes (no private ownership of firearms). Whitney argues there’s an intractable political divide about guns that only his measured wisdom can bridge.

But the reaction to this year’s string of prominent gun crimes undercuts Whitney’s project. That reaction was—beyond personal and some civic grief—nothing, except a bump in private gun buying. No effective new call for stronger gun regulations arose. As gun-control activists complained, guns and gun policy didn’t come up at all in the domestic-policy presidential debate in October between President Obama and Mitt Romney.

It may be true that there is still, as Whitney writes, “hysteria that passes for discussion of the Second Amendment by gun rights supporters and advocates of gun control.” But that hysteria is localized within a narrow community of obsessives. It’s not dominating American politics or tearing us asunder as a people. It’s not an issue that really demands big rethinking right now.

That doesn’t make what’s valuable in Whitney’s book less so, if you happen to be interested. He provides tight but informative overviews of how and why we have a Second Amendment. He explains how courts and American politics have dealt with it (largely by ignoring the amendment for much of our history). He relates the history of gun-control laws from colonial times to now and navigates the reader through the slow shifts in the legal and academic understanding of what the Second Amendment means that led to the 2008 and 2010 Supreme Court cases Heller v. D.C. and McDonald v. Chicago. Those decisions established, respectively, that the Second Amendment does protect an individual right to possess weapons—at least commonly used ones, in one’s own home—and that the right must be respected by states and localities as well as by the federal government.

Guns are a huge presence on the American landscape, no doubt. With an estimated 300 million firearms privately owned in America, we practically have a weapon for every citizen. In 2010, the last year for which the FBI has data, 67 percent of murders in America were committed with guns, for a total of 8,775 gun murders. (Though reliable hard data are impossible to come by, best estimates indicate that guns in private hands are also used tens of thousands of times a year to prevent crimes.)

But while guns themselves are still a big deal to Americans, the political struggle over them no longer is. At the beginning of the 1990s, Gallup found 78 percent of Americans asking for stricter gun laws. By 2009, that number was 44 percent, a historic low. The Democratic Party has grown leery of the issue, as many Democrats have come to believe that both the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress and Al Gore’s 2000 presidential loss could be blamed on backlash against the party’s gun-control victories of the early 1990s: the Brady Bill, which imposed national background checks before you can buy a gun, and the “assault weapon” ban on certain types of semiautomatic guns and magazines.

Americans have seen the number of guns in private hands continue to rise—and the number of states that pretty much allow any law-abiding citizen to carry concealed weapons reach over 40. We have simultaneously witnessed a 41 percent decline in overall violent crime rates over the past two decades. The homicide rate has fallen by nearly half over that period.

The assault-weapon ban expired in 2004, and though candidate Obama talked up reviving it, President Obama has let it lie. (Not even the ban’s defenders can claim it made the country any safer.) Obama’s sanguine acceptance of gun rights earned him an “F” grade from the Brady Center after his first year in office. His administration’s lack of interest in gun laws did not change even after this year’s wave of high-profile firearms crimes. Americans have come to understand that such acts are still quite rare. More to the point, no imaginable public-policy solution will keep the occasional deranged criminal from doing evil with weapons.

Whitney stresses the importance of keeping guns out of what all reasonable people agree are the “wrong hands,” even as he presents the embarrassing history of colonial and early America, in which seemingly reasonable people believed blacks, Indians, Roman Catholics, and non-property-owners should be kept from weapons. Whitney harps on the notion that the Second Amendment right is supposed to come with civic responsibilities. Though he knows that used to mean being prepared to fight government tyranny, he avoids saying that might ever be necessary today, and Whitney fails to convince a skeptical reader that the civic responsibility in question should mean much more than making sure no one is unjustly harmed by the weapons you own.

Whitney is obsessed with being more stringent in using the information accessible to our existing Brady Law background check system to ensure no one labeled as psychiatrically disturbed or a drug abuser can own a gun. He ignores the reality that the vast majority of people in those categories never use a gun in a criminal way and deserve to own guns for purposes of protection or recreation the same way other Americans do. While we may agree a mass shooter is ipso facto psychiatrically disturbed, it is frequently the case that they have never been authoritatively labeled that way such that a background check would matter. Gun crimes remain mostly outside that part of life which laws or kings can cause or cure.

The historical information in Living With Guns is interesting and mostly apt; the policy prescriptions are mostly beside the point. And the sense of mission that propels the book is misdirected. For all its merits, including readability, this book is a contribution to a policy debate about guns and gun-control that, for now, is over.

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40 Responses to Gun Control, RIP

So if the debate’s over why do I have a millions yahoos on the internet and the radio telling me our right to bear arms is hanging by a thread? Why is Dick Morris invited to Fox News to talk about the UN/Obama backdoor plan to take all our guns?

I agree- the gun control debate is over. It’s been over for years and this Liberal couldn’t care less. It has little to no effect on my life either way.

Looking over the media and online landscape I really don’t see a lot of Libs who even care enough about the issue to make a ruckus . It’s the hysterical bed-wetters on the far-right that need your arguments.

The Democrats have learned that gun control is the social issue that can doom them so they have wisely chosen not to press the matter. And frankly, given the number of guns in private hands now, any legislation would be a meaningless, unenforceable scrap of paper.

The personal handgun is the lawful person’s first line of defense against interpersonal criminal aggression. Abrogation of the individual right of arms, privileges criminals at the expense of the lawful; and
“regulation” that is abrogation in all but name, makes self-defense a political football and firearm ownership a mark of political favor.

I think the most extreme “gun control” ideas floated these days are just magazine restrictions. Those are both minor changes and unlikely in my opinion. Which, as Andrew says makes the whole “Obama will take our guns” thing seem that much more irrational.

I’ll never forget the “Obama will take our guns, contact me to buy some now” flyer stapled to a neighborhood telephone pole. It was about 8/10 on the paranoia scale. And yet I kept hearing echoes of that screed from seemingly sane people and outlets. It was a meme.

@Robert, for what it’s worth, the Alaska Fish and Game says that you are better off with pepper spray in the back-country than with a gun. That is, in friggin’ Alaska more people are injured by their own guns than grizzly bears.

Link: “You are allowed to carry a gun for protection in state parks. Remember, though, that more people are hurt by the guns they carry than are hurt by bears.”

If it’s true there, in that most extreme environment, is there actually a place in civilization a gun makes you safer? And if so, should you just move?

Link: “You are allowed to carry a gun for protection in state parks. Remember, though, that more people are hurt by the guns they carry than are hurt by bears.”

If it’s true there, in that most extreme environment, is there actually a place in civilization a gun makes you safer?

I don’t know about the truth, there. I don’t. I’m sorry. The Alaskan aphorism without doubt is applies to the wilds of that state giving birth to it. Until I am informed as to how many bears can be counted on to hurt people within the confines of skyscraper, careening taxis and decaying refuse; and how many biped-predators prey on people inside the campground and R.V.’s, I’m withholding judgment.

I concede it may all depend upon whether unhappy Detroit, and the knavery bared by its peculiar City Council, qualifies as a “place in civilization.”

With respect to all the gun violence in America, which isn’t caused by guns per se, rather something in the American psyche, I always find it remarkable that Americans continue to vote to enable the lunatics. Almost no one else in the world does and are safer in life and limb for it.

That said, everyone is free to organize their society as they see fit. The American way is merely one among many and we can judge the comparative results accordingly.

@AA, there is an easy statistical answer. Death by suicide occurs at twice the rate of death by assault. A handy gun might not always be a good thing. Actually, assault is way down the list as a risk for Americans. link.

So you know, where do you invest your concern? We might all watch our diet and exercise today. That would be a good idea.

The national debate may be in a lull – watch for that to change if Obama gets the chance to replace one of the 5 justices who voted for Heller – but the debate remains hot at the state level.

In New Jersey, for instance, effectively no one has a carry permit, not even for protection against animals while hiking in remote areas. And there’s no castle law, either, which means that if a criminal invades your residence and you are able to retreat out of your house without being harmed, you must abandon your home. Furthermore, the state legislature is always concocting new proposals to make it even harder to own or shoot a gun in self-defense. In Jersey, apart from a limited right to use a gun in the home, the lawful citizen must remain defenseless against any threat, whether two-legged or four-legged.

Those in favor of the right of self-defense still have a big political fight in front of them. The debate is not over.

If you actually want to stop spree killers, the laws required are imaginable. There hasn’t bee a spree killing in Britain since 1996, because of laws that have stopped it.

But you’d have to start with a constitutional amendment to remove the Second Amendment, because the UK’s laws prohibit any private citizen from owning any handgun, and any gun with any loading mechanism (automatic, semi-automatic, pump-action, lever-action, revolver, whatever).

Guns have to be above a certain minimum length, and have to be muzzle-loading or break-open loading (like shotguns).

It’s imaginable – I just imagined it, but it would mean a total change to American society; the USA wouldn’t really be the USA any more.

I’m liberal on economics and social issues… except this one. I don’t own a gun. I have no desire to.

However, I’ve been convinced of the following:

1) The much mocked “guns don’t kill people, people do” thing is basically correct. We have a more violent society. Having lots of guns probably makes this worse at the margin, but the underlying problems are driving it, not guns. I’d like to address those. Meanwhile, if you’re actually following the data, violent crime rates continue to plummet. One spree killer, or even 3, doesn’t amount to much in the grand scheme of things.

2) The 2nd amendment says what it says. I think it’s rather clear. I don’t think the bit about a well-regulated militia means what many fellow liberals seem to think it means.

3) Given #2, this means that many state-level laws are likely unconstitutional. Of course, my broad interpretation also means that basically any infantry weapon should be fully legal (including fully automatic weapons and shoulder launched missles).

4) This leads me to conclude the 2nd amendment could use some reasonable updating, but that’s a total fantasy. Not gonna happen, because the discussion is anything but reasonable. There is a lot of hysteria, on both sides (I’m not normally a both-sides-do-it guy, but here I think it’s true).

@ rob wrote “) The much mocked “guns don’t kill people, people do” thing is basically correct. We have a more violent society.”

yes, we have more violent society than other developed countries. we must admit this at first, then having done so we will be able to come up with solutions to the gun problem. however, it would be difficult to admit that america is more violent, but not difficult to prove. all we need do is look at statistics. then of course we would hear responses, ‘we kill more not because we are REALLY more violent, but because of our socio/cultural situtation’ (or something like that). well, is that ‘sociocultural situation’ not real? then, lets do something about it. i remember henry miller commenting on the american ‘psyche’, ie paraphrasing ‘americans are a combination of brutality and warmth’, lets increase the latter.

Unless and until the USA norms its gun laws to more closely match those of Canada and Mexico, and stops exporting guns to organized crime in those and other countries, the USA must be regarded as a rogue state in this regard–far, far worse than Bolivians growing coca for the drug trade.

I was a moderate on gun control for years. I know many people who own guns and don’t really use them. I was OK with this.

But I cannot join the collective shrug at situations of acute localized gun terror. My friends’ right to own an essentially hypothetical weapon can’t trump the right of persons in Nuevo Laredo, Juarez, or New Orleans to live with law and order instead of in terror.

My view has–precipitously–shifted very far to the restrictionist side with the events of this year.

I’m afraid I agree with Wayne LaPierre now, in one regard: there is no middle ground. It is really all or nothing. We must repeal the Second Amendment, demand the peaceable surrender of all handguns, and hunt down and destroy all those who do not comply.

And the Ice-T’s of this nation, who romanticize joining a gang war against police, are despicable agents provocateurs, destroying the young who listen to them. They must be shamed; they must be humiliated.

Maybe my views will re-moderate in time. It could happen. Enlightenment is an ongoing process.

But absent some concern from US gun owners about illegal gun exports and guns in the hands of organized crime, I’m unwilling to concede to the gun rights position. I am not prepared to take terribly seriously a delusional and selfish desire for guns Americans don’t strictly need.

Philip, no need to hunt me down. I will be standing against people like you as long as I draw breath.

The government is the one who was exporting arms to Mexico, not private citizens. The drug gangs buy their weapons on the international arms market. That is where they get machine guns and hand grenades, two items you cannot buy as a private citizen (without tons of paperwork) in the United States. Probably the biggest supplier of weapons to the Mexican drug gangs is the Mexican Army.

In reality the reason for the 2nd Amendment’s drafting was not so that people could have the right to protect themselves from aggressors trying to do them harm or for that matter for hunting and or target shooting. The reason for the 2nd Amendment was so that the people could protect themselves from their own government. Once all the basic rights of individual citizens are taken away from them by the state or those people who represent the interests of the state the only line of last resistance is for the citizens to take up arms. Every despot and tyrant throughout history has seized the arms of those people who are trying to protect their rights and property. Especially in nations where there are no neutral courts or judges but judges who are there to primarily protect the interests and the power of the state. A disarmed population is a population that can be controlled. All the rhetoric that comes from the hypocritical mouths of “liberal”politicians about the evil that is firearms in the hands of ordinary people is only an excuse to disarm these same people so that when the laws come down making ordinary citizens nothing but tax serfs they will not rebel and just do what their told. In the end, during World War 2, if every Jew was armed and met every Nazi at the Jews front door with an assault rifle maybe there would have been no Holocaust. Think about it.

Frank: Your picking out of one clause from the Constitution: Art.1 Sec 8,Clause 15 (to suppress Insurrections) does not exclude or preclude the original founding fathers intent over the 2nd Amendment. In fact, the Supreme Court has often sided with the Inalienable Right of people to possess firearms. If you read the Founder’s views on citizen’s Firearms Rights check out Madison’s views in #46 of the Federalist Papers, it is an enlightening trip back in time to what the signers of the Constitution were thinking..

One spree killer, or even 3, doesn’t amount to much in the grand scheme of things.

Unless you or a member of you family is sitting in the theater enjoying your popcorn and a movie when some psycho decides that he’s had it, time to kill a couple dozen innocent bystanders.

libertarian jerry,

All the guns in the world won’t do you any good against an oppressive government, they did not stop the US from invading Iraq or Afghanistan countries in which a substantial proportion of the population was armed. Only a real militia armed with real military weapons with the support of the local population can stop an oppressive government, see Hezbollah as the prime example.

If you think that a bunch of yahoos with rifles, handguns and shotguns are going to stop a company of Marines from doing whatever they damn well please, you are delusional.

WRT Canadian gun laws there is a widespread belief in the US that 1) Canadian laws are far more strict and 2) this results in a lower homicide rate.

First the laws are stricter in some senses and more lenient in others. Felons may legally own firearms. Guns may be bought through the mail. Converted autos are legal. Short barreled shotguns are legal without extra taxes or permits. The imports of some military semi-auto rifles are legal. Imports from China are legal.

On the other hand CCWs are very rare and handguns and military style rifles are generally limited to use on official ranges. There is a national license to possess firearms.

The point is that Canadians own millions of firearms including AR 15s, semi-auto pistols and “sawed off” shotguns and there are about 200 homicides with firearms per year (1/3 of all homicides).

The legal private ownership of guns doesn’t seem linked to homicide rates. Laws designed to control or restrict it are for appearances only.

Don QuiJote said, “If you think that a bunch of yahoos with rifles, handguns and shotguns are going to stop a company of Marines from doing whatever they damn well please, you are delusional.”

Hey Don, have you lkooked at how Afghanistan is working out for us lately? There is an object lesson of what a poorly armed, untrained, but dedicated group of yahoos can do to tie up a modern, fully equipped military operation.

We’re going to declare victory and pull out soon, the U.S. can’t sustain the cost in equipment and blood. Tell me they won’t celebrate.

libertarian jerry: Federalist Paper 46 is very interesting. Thanks for the recommendation. (For others who want to read it, take a look at the third-to-last paragraph here: http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa46.htm. Even better, read the entire thing.)

Don Quijote: You mock the need for self-defense against animals in the wild. Perhaps you are comfortable facing a mountain lion, bear, or moose without a gun, but many of us are not, especially those of us who might hike with children.

As for your point about the Iraq War, it actually goes contrary to your own argument. A sort of militia – actually, various militias – succeeded in convincing Americans that it was not worth keeping soldiers there. They didn’t prevent the war in the first place, but they did have a certain amount of success, from their point of view. And they also deterred Americans from lightly launching another such war.

The Framers of the Constitution understood the difference between an unjustified “insurrection” and a justified revolution (such as the one in which many of them had engaged several years earlier). That the Constitution empowers the national government to suppress insurrections does not mean that citizens have no right to revolt, if done for the right reasons.

See Lincoln’s First Inaugural for more on this distinction (and do a search for the paragraphs in which “revolutionary” appears, if you do not wish to read the entire thing): http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html

In addition to the Bird spree shooting in 2010, Britian has suffered from repeated shootings involving FULL AUTO weapons – which have been banned completely there since the 1930’s. Do some research.

Homicide in the UK is rare. Homicide involving firearms is rarer still. It’s always been that way, even before there were any gun control laws on the books. But after law-abiding citizens were disarmed, non-lethal violent crime has skyrocketed, and homicide rates have continuously increased. Contrast that to the U.S.’s decade-long DECREASE in violent crime, both lethal and non-leathal.

Gun control laws have not made the UK “safer.” Look up Colin Greenwood and his studies of the efficacy of “gun control” laws there.

The simple fact is that free men are armed. No amount amount of hand-wringing will change this. Americans will not give up their rights unless they are conquered in war. Until that day they will continue to shoot to their hearts’ content.

For now Europeans are not as violent as Americans, but demographic transition and resurgent nationalism might change that.

Don Quijote: You mock the need for self-defense against animals in the wild. Perhaps you are comfortable facing a mountain lion, bear, or moose without a gun, but many of us are not, especially those of us who might hike with children.

No I mock the idea of dangerous wild animals in New Jersey, had you picked Montana, Wyoming, Alaska as examples I would have taken your argument a lot more seriously.

BTW a 30-6 rifle with a five round magazine is more than sufficient to handle most wild life in the US. If you can’t hit the target with 5 rounds, you deserve to be eaten…

As for your point about the Iraq War, it actually goes contrary to your own argument. A sort of militia – actually, various militias – succeeded in convincing Americans that it was not worth keeping soldiers there. They didn’t prevent the war in the first place, but they did have a certain amount of success, from their point of view.

The weapon of choice was the IED not a rifle, handgun or shotgun…

And they also deterred Americans from lightly launching another such war.

And Santa Claus is going to drop a brand new Lotus under my Christmas three.
As long as there is no cost to war Americans will eagerly send other people’s children to third world shit holes to kill brown people with out giving it a second thought.

The US has more violence than most developed countries because the US has more Negroes and Mexicans than most developed countries. 15% of the population is responsible for 95% of the violent crime in the US.

This is an ugly truth, but burying your heads in the sand and repeating PC platitudes, and accusing me of “racism,” whatever that word even means, will not make it go away. The truth is like that.

I’m for states rights on this issue. It makes sense for NYC to have different gun laws than Alabama. The Second Amendment doesn’t ban reasonable state or federal regulations on gun licensing and ownership (including requiring that a person prove he has been trained in gun safety before being permitted to own a gun), but as a policy matter, the issue should not be federalized.

“Whitney argues there’s an intractable political divide about guns that only his measured wisdom can bridge.”

When I see a sentence as douchey as this, it really undercuts my faith in the reviewer. You do know, don’t you, that people who write non-fiction books OFTEN present their opinion for debate. It is not necessarily indicative of narcissism. Furthermore, one could make the same statement of your article, that an understanding of the book is something you believe only your measured wisdom can provide. In both cases, the comment is out of place in any real discussion of th issues.

I’ve been an NRA member for years, and I support the Second Amendment; I am glad to see some liberals supporting it too. And I am sick to death of the NRA always trying to panic me into believing that the UN is about to charge into my apartment and take my guns.

What I would like to see is this – given that a broad majority of Americans agree that widespread disarming of the law-abiding populace is not the answer to mass murders using guns, what should we do instead? Is there really nothing short of the evisceration of the Second Amendment that can be done to at least reduce the number of madmen murdering people at random?

Personally, I am a socialist, but I side with the liberals on many things and vote with the Democrats.

I favor repeal of the 2nd Amendment or, failing that, some new “discovery” by the Supremes to the effect that it doesn’t, after all, guarantee an individual right to own or carry firearms against not only federal action but the states, as well.

I rather wish you had summarized Whitney’s case, if he actually provided one, in defense of the 2nd.

The British Gov’t has a number of ways that they cook the books on crime statistics.

The police refuse to take reports on crimes, as a starter.
Many people refuse to even talk to the police about crime, to limit problems the police cause.
They play games with cause of death certificates, to hide crime numbers.
It goes on and on…
The gov’t is desperate to hide the facts, due to violent crime getting so bad, and getting worse.

“Gun crimes remain mostly outside that part of life which laws or kings can cause or cure.” is not true as a generalised assertion. Australia has extremely tight gun ownership laws and the introduction of these laws in the past three decades or so have progressively lead to statistically significant decreases in gun related violence.

The net outcome is that only approximately 15% of Australian homicides are committed with guns (cf. about 40% in the US) and our rate of firearm homicide is less than 2 per 100,000 people compared to over 9 per 100,000 in the US. Further, since automatic and semi-automatic weaponary was effectively banned following a gun massacre in 1998, there has been only one mass shooting (with two deaths) – and that lead to further restrictions on handguns, which were used in that instance.

I’d concede that as a practical measure, the horse has probably well and truly bolted in the US, but reducing gun crime through government intervention is categorically not impossible – the US has in a very real sense chosen its current appaling state of gun violence.

In further support of Will’s response to Mr. McLennan, look at Theodore Dalrymple’s works on the topic, such as his essay, “Real Crime, Fake Justice,” which states in part:

“In any case, the authorities want the police to use a sanction known as the caution—a mere verbal warning. Indeed, as Fraser points out, the Home Office even reprimanded the West Midlands Police Force for bringing too many apprehended offenders to court, instead of merely giving them a caution. In the official version, only minor crimes are dealt with in this fashion: but as Fraser points out, in the year 2000 alone, 600 cases of robbery, 4,300 cases of car theft, 6,600 offenses of burglary, 13,400 offenses against public order, 35,400 cases of violence against the person, and 67,600 cases of other kinds of theft were dealt with in this fashion—in effect, letting these 127,900 offenders off scot-free. When one considers that the police clear-up rate of all crimes in Britain is scarcely more than one in 20 (and even that figure is based upon official deception), the liberal intellectual claim, repeated ad nauseam in the press and on the air, that the British criminal-justice system is primitively retributive is absurd.”

The entire thing is worth reading. Dalrymple is one of the finest living essayists.

Well, I’m glad that you conservatives understand that it’s not guns we have to worry about, it’s people. Thankfully gun owning conservatives are robots, so we should not have anything to fear from their lovable gun-toting antics. I’m also really glad that you tell everybody that it’s just those crazy people we need to worry about. Thankfully, you all have complete and perfect control over your own mental states, so we don’t have to worry about you doing anything untoward with your arsenal of death dealing weaponry. Thanks again, you really made everybody’s day today!